Or maybe I should say pig-headed stubbornness instead of persistence.

Anyway...in 1937 my Dad bought me what is now known to collector's as a Zenith "Tombstone" radio. With it we listened to police calls and other shortwave transmissions from around the world, aircraft, AM, FM,and more. During the London Blitz and the German invasion of Poland, we listened to live broadcasts from the sites.

When I went in the service, I guess they figured I was never coming home alive...my mom gave away my pet skunk, and threw my radio and some other of my other stuff in an old disused chicken coop. It stayed there until well after I was air-evac'd home. I finally rescued it in the 1970s when I found out where it was.

I found a guy in Phoenix who overhauled it and it worked as well as ever. (He is now gone to the great broadcast studio in the sky where even the old Zenith can't pick him up.)

Then when living in Oregon, one day the maid knocked it off of the bar in the living room and after that it wouldn't function. Both the tuner and a couple of tubes were broken. That was about 1993.

Naturally I looked everywhere up there to find someone who could/would repair it. No dice. There was One guy in Portland, but he demanded I ship it to a U.S.P.S. box number, and would not give me his phone number, or physical address, or any name but his business's name. Of course, I wasn't about to do that.

So, this week I started to search the Phoenix Area now that our move is pretty much completed and we are re-organized. Found a guy almost my age, who is tickled to do the work. He came out yesterday to my house and picked it up. Today he called with an estimate, having completely disassembled it and tested all the circuits, tubes, resistors, power supply, and so on.

His cost estimate is less than 50% of what the guy in Portland wanted twenty years ago. So he is going to completely clean it, replace weak tubes and resistors, put in an NOS (!!) tuner, refinish the cabinet, and hand deliver it back to me for about $250 all done including tax.! (I would have most willingly paid more than double that if necessary to get my old friend and family keepsake working again and all gussied-up.)

Instant gratification it's not, but it does prove a person should never, ever, give up if he/she really wants something....and that there are still good people out there with the old-time work-ethics and morality.


They truly are what made America great.

quote:

They truly are what made America great.

Yessir!


.

"a person should never, ever, give up if he/she really wants something....and that there are still good people out there with the old-time work-ethics and morality."

Just t'aint nuff of them.

Bless you for the post. Nostalgia is wonderful.